Inside the Green Berets Facts

The US Army's SF motto "De Oppresso Liber" is Latin for "To Free the Oppressed."

US Army special forces' positions are only offered to men.

To become a Green beret, there are a series of qualification trainings a candidate must pass. First the candidate must be airborne qualified or volunteer to be airborne trained. Next they must complete various levels of training that include a 30 day course testing physical endurance and land navigation. Many candidates are eliminated during this process. The final phase is the Qualification course of the Q-course, where a two week duty to a fictional country called "Pineland" is enforced. Those that pass this final phase become a Green Beret.

These two dozen Green Berets have almost as much
fire power on their Humvees as a conventional platoon of 40 men. Each vehicle
carries a variety of automatic weapons.
Some vehicles are equipped with M2 .50 Caliber machine guns mounted in a
turret while others are equipped with an M247 Automatic Grenade Launcher also
mounted in the turret. All vehicles have
M240 Machine Guns mounted in the rear and side mounts for additional weapons
such as an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon.

The MP-5 submachine gun is a favorite of the
Green Berets. This almost bombproof weapon is compact and lightweight, ideal
for confined spaces such as helicopters and personnel carriers, and can be
fitted with a sound suppressor. Two or even three magazines of ammunition can
be lashed together, making a fresh supply of 9mm near at hand.

The Green Berets at firebase Cobra must rely on
the locals from the surrounding villages to fill jobs at the base. Locals work in the kitchen and often provide
food to the soldiers, which can be risky if their allegiances are not known.
The soldiers do their best to put each man through a background check to ensure
the safety of their team.

The US Army special forces was established in 1952 but traces its lineage
from World War II’s joint Canadian-American 1st Special Service Force that
served in the Mediterranean, Europe and Asia between 1942 and 1945.

The special forces got their nickname from their distinctive headgear. In 1962, President Kennedy said the green berets
were “a symbol of excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the
fight for freedom."

One of
the first Green Beret units to enter Afghanistan in Oct. 2001 was Detachment 595. In order to move effectively on the battlefield, they borrowed horses and mules
from the Northern Alliance’s horse-mounted forces. Using this mode of
transportation as their primary means of movement, the soldiers achieved a
level of battlefield mobility that was superior to any motorized vehicle.